


Atlas

by 35grams



Series: Earthling [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: (many kinds), Confessions, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Sick Character, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Stress Relief, Vanguard (Mass Effect), brief mentions of precoup thane/shepard, nb or genderless shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22660663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/35grams/pseuds/35grams
Summary: After losing the Catalyst to Cerberus, the commander succumbs to a rare biotic fever.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Male Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: Earthling [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630042
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Atlas

They're on route to the Citadel to restock before following a lead to Sanctuary. Liara hasn't kept track of how long she has been coordinating transport for Thessia's refugees. She has Glyph handle the bulk of it, but not all nearby captains are accommodating. She negotiates pay, bribes, threats, and calls in favors to get everything from civilian to military to freight vessels on and off the planet fast. Her back aches, shoulders hard and stiff. Her eyes are still swollen, though her tears have long since dried.

There is a ringing in her ears, and it isn't until Glyph interrupts that she realizes it is not in her head.

"Javik for you, doctor."

"Put him on."

He is agitated. "Do you not feel it, T'Soni?"

"If you could be more specific-"

Glyph interrupts. "Tali'Zorah for you, doctor, marked Urgent."

"Put her on."

"Liara, drive core's reacting to odd signatures above us. Might interfere with our trajectory when we use a relay and I wondered if you have any idea-"

"Doctor T'Soni, there is-" EDI joins.

"One at a time, please."

Glyph informs her that Javik is outside her door a moment before his fist pounds on it. Liara foolishly thinks she can collect herself for a moment through its incessant hammering. She tries not to think about how many people will die in the time it takes to field this. 

"Let him in."

He bursts inside. "Where is the commander?"

"It's third shift. They should be resting."

"We must wake them immediately."

"What? Why-"

"Concentrate, asari."

Liara tears herself away from her console. With difficulty, she centers herself with a steadying breath and attempts to read the biotic fields around her. Her breath catches. 

"Doctor," EDI says, "detecting aberrant signatures in the commander's cabin."

"Aberrant signatures..." Javik mutters.

He is right. The fields are all wrong. Wrong in a way she can't even describe. "This is- I've never-"

"I have," he says, and leaves as quickly as he came. She tails him upstairs.

"Shepard?" she calls. "We just want to-"

"No time," Javik says. "Computer, open this."

Liara balks. "You do not make that call. Not to mention that it is a gross violation of-"

"I defer to the ship's XO in this circumstance," EDI says, "However, doctor, these are not normal readings. Nor has the commander responded to private hails. Furthermore, if adrenaline levels continue to climb past three hundred percent of baseline, a cardiac arrest is imminent."

"A ca- you really should have lead with that, EDI. Open."

When the doors slide open, she understands why Javik had taken cover. The force of the discordant fields nearly knocks her feet out from under her. She is nearly flush with the opposite wall before she finds her footing. 

Javik grabs her arm, summons a biotic barrier around them both, and wades through the warbling miasma. EDI shuts the door behind them before the ship is inundated with it. The atmosphere is so dense that they must feel their way through, so disorienting that it is less than a meter from the commander's bed when they begin to recognize them through the rippling fields. The biotic hum is so loud that though they are shoulder to shoulder, they are forced to listen to one another through filtered earpieces.

Shepard lies still, but not in rest. Every muscle in them strains. Their eyes are dilated and fixed to the ceiling, but they are unfocused, sightless, as if forced open. Liara's increasingly panicked calls go unanswered. Every few seconds, the biotics simmering from their body produce a menacingly obsidian flare.

Javik stops her from touching them. "I have seen this before," he says. "I never imagined I would again."

"Chakwas should-"

"Unless your doctor is well versed in Prothean physiobiotic fevers, I think not."

"That's impossible. This could be an implant defect, or...or-"

"I tell you that I have seen this exact thing." He turns to Shepard and speaks as if they can hear. "Humans would call it Atlas fever, if I understand our mythological analogues."

"Could the beacon have...no, it doesn't matter now. How do we treat this?"

"We don't. Not when it gets like this."

Liara rounds on him. "I don't accept that."

"They must ride this fever out like any other. In the meantime, seal this room before the drive core sneezes and the engineers have their own heart attacks." He turns to leave.

"Wait. Why now? How did this happen?"

"I am surprised this is the first you've seen of it. Stiffening like this occurs in the final stage. It was irresponsible of them to have allowed it to progress this far." He gives her a hard look. "Be ready to assume command, T'Soni."

Liara summons her own barrier as Javik breaks away to leave the cabin. She struggles not to hurl something at him.

"Doctor," EDI says, "Shepard's vitals have been stabilizing since you entered the cabin, and particularly since you began speaking. It suggests a psychological element to this condition when manifested in humans."

"I see. And Protheans do have a more...porous connection between body and mind."

"Biotic fevers are not unheard of in humans, though exceedingly rare. I recommend monitoring the commander while I cross reference relevant records."

"Could it have anything to do with the Prothean beacon? Lazarus?"

"Unknown. Searching."

"Use secure lines. It will be slower, but this can't get out. Not when we're hunting Cerberus."

"Yes, doctor."

Liara moves to the cabin washroom, wets a small towel, and returns to carefully place it across their forehead. "I've never known Shepard to suffer fevers. Not like this. How could they have kept this a secret?"

"Similar, though far less extreme, somatic readings date back to these stardates. I will forward them to your omnitool."

Liara sits on the bed. Her hand hovers over theirs. White-knuckled. Curled into the sheets. The heat of it burns even at a distance. She draws away and turns to her omnitool. 

She sighs and switches it off. "These dates don't mean anything to me. I wasn't on the Normandy, then."

Shepard turns slightly, though she can't say if they are lucid. They're flushed, eyes unfocused, and they are still so rigid that Liara can't imagine the ache waiting for them when the stiffness passes. 

She is reminded of something she had hoped to forget. Several somethings. Back on Mars, when the Cerberus bot pummeled Ashley, she thought she saw flickers of black in their otherwise healthy biotic blue when they charged it. A trick of the light, she thought. Then, a deafening burst of obsidian as they hurled a shockwave after Kai Leng on the Citadel, Thane's blood whipping off his sword in his haste to flee. Unmistakable, that time, but there was the little matter of an active coup and high speed chase to distract her. Now that she recalls with purpose, there were definitely flickers elsewhere whenever they were in the field, drops of ink in turbulent blue.

But they do routine medicals. Chakwas would have caught something as routine as a defective implant, and even something less routine, like some hiccup in their Lazarus augments. No one else seemed to see it or mention it. 

She should have said something. From the moment the reapers hit Earth, there was always too much to do, too much to track, to organize, to fight. Shepard always just seemed to handle it, whatever it was. Everything runs off them like water, always had. Always will, she thought. 

"I'll stay a while," she says, "and then...Tali was with you before, and Garrus. They'll know more about these dates. They've always been..." She trails off as Shepard breathes shallowly, harshly. They could have called for help. It's unlikely this happened all at once. How often had these fevers plagued them? How long had they lain in this bed, gritting it out, alone? 

Fury flares through her. She brings a fist down on her own knee. "How could you keep this from us? From me? I know Javik is exaggerating, but I have eyes, I see it's not by much. You've been hogging shots too. Garrus won't stop complaining." 

She gives a choked little laugh. "We've been catching up. He'd joke that he can read your mood by how many you block and how. Tali says she knows when you're hungry by the way you walk. Sometimes, even what you're craving. I don't know, maybe they can. Maybe they should be here instead."

She doesn't know what she's saying, or where this is coming from. She shouldn't be dredging this up in a friend's sickbed.

Now that she has time to reflect, their last encounter with Cerberus had been different. She had to force them away from gunship fire on Thessia not once. They were always hardheaded, but never so blatantly suicidal. Not without a plan, however ridiculous. If she hadn't budged them, the Catalyst would have been theirs, and Kai Leng would be dead. But so would Shepard.

She reaches for their hand again, and takes it. It burns, until it doesn't. 

**

Tali holds her arms out to steady Liara as she emerges from the cabin. 

"Should be...safe now...without barrier..."

"You should have called sooner," Tali says. "I could have bribed Javik to pull up a barrier for me."

Liara says something Tali can't make out. She walks her back to her office before returning upstairs for her turn. The air is heavy in the cabin. Shepard looks felled by it, unmoving but for an occasional twitch at their mouth, of a finger. Biotics still flutter and flare about them, but it is nothing like Liara described when she first discovered them. Tali replaces the cool cloth on their forehead, adjusts the temperature, props them up with heavy gloves to have a drink of water, and hops on the bed beside them.

"You don't mind if I work on Chiktikka? She'll never forgive me if I don't tune her."

Tali's drone materializes and wanders curiously around the cabin. She whistles it back.

"I just keep putting it off, you know?" She positions her omnitool over her when she returns. "But you would know all about that. Like, oh, I don't know, not telling us about some mystery Protheanish fever you supposedly had for like, a year. Commander Shepard, hero of the Citadel, slayer of reapers: defeated by a hot flash."

Shepard mutters something.

"Can't quite hear you, commander."

Shepard musters something a bit louder.

"I'm getting interference on this frequency, Shepard."

Shepard groans.

"Screw...you."

Tali pats them on the shoulder. "Good. Still in there."

When she is through with Chiktikka, Shepard is out again. A black flare flickers now and then as they mutter in their sleep. They wince at every unconscious movement. 

It's that damned Claymore. Shepard's been charging around with a krogan shotgun half as heavy as Grunt and with kickback like a mounted cannon. They use it to corner brutes and primes and anything else the size and force of an armored truck before it can even touch anyone else, but they all but limp back to the ship after every field op. 

When they reunited, Tali had been looking forward to the rapid precision snaps of their old shotgun at her side, only to hurry to adjust her suit audio feedback and move to a safe distance before she has to bet on whether her ears rupture first or the shrapnel kicked up by that monster punctures her suit. 

Not that Shepard makes it easy to fight side by side anymore. In the time it would take to warn the team of a nearby turret, it is already in pieces, along with its engineer and two of his pals. Fine. Good. She can lounge behind a column and have Chiktikka zap the trail of bewildered Cerberus grunts in their wake if they so enjoy kicking them up for her.

Except they don't. Maybe they're not as obnoxious as Garrus when they're having a good time, but they all have tells. When they're clear of all but one or two, Shepard would throw their own gun aside, disarm them, and wrestle or box them to the ground. Tap some tune on the metal plating on their hip. That or card through their hair despite how much blood or gunpowder or soot they get in there and make sure they wink when Tali sees them and groans. It's beyond filthy. It's unnecessary - their hair is shorn but for a neat little mess up top she is sure they keep around just for this maneuver, just to torture her. Worse still, Shepard may suspect it riles her up in more than one way. Barely. Just a little. 

She hasn't seen any of it since they reunited. They were plenty exhausted chasing Saren and the Collectors, but this is another kind. Desperate. Unsustainable. Now that this fever is staring her in the face, it's the most obvious thing in the world. She should have said something.

Shepard drifts awake and, with visible difficulty, attempts to unclench their fists. Their feeble efforts must startle them too, because they turn to one hand and stare it down as if to intimidate it into moving.

Tali hasn't had the chance to look at their hands before, not at leisure. She takes one of theirs in her own when they are loose enough to move. More scarred than not. Gnarled, uneven knuckles. A story in every inch.

"They're so beaten up," she says. "Your field gloves are too thin." She passes her thumb over their knuckles. "I get it, though. Need to feel what you're doing."

Shepard murmurs something in agreement.

"Same with me. I mean, when i program Ch- ugh, hold on." 

She withdraws her hand and unlocks her suit at her wrists. Shepard frowns at this and makes an agitated sound. 

"Don't worry, I'm still sealed. These inner gloves have a much better range of movement. Just need to be careful not to run into Garrus' face."

She watches Shepard's grin triumphantly. It fades as Tali moves her hands over one of their own, softly warming the stiff joints.

Shepard pulls back, but not far enough to separate them. "You don't...have to..."

Tali clicks her tongue at them and starts again. "One of the suits passed down to me when I was younger was criminally old," Tali says. "We fixed it up best we could, but any time it was cooler than a Sur'Kesh afternoon, the material would go stiff on me. Locked my elbows, my back, everything. Mom joked it was great for my posture. Nothing to do but bear it until I could go home, change into a temporary undersuit, and stretch for an hour. Mom would massage my hands sometimes. It was the best feeling in the world."

Shepard listens closely, wincing occasionally as Tali works their palm. 

"Purely utilitarian now, obviously. Need you back up and knocking heads. No ulterior motive whatsoever."

She moves to the other hand before long. Winces become grateful little hums.

**

It takes every atom in him not to take a picture of this, and were Shepard in a less dire state, he might have. Garrus had woken up to his shift to no less than what looked like several essays worth of messages from Liara, along with a simple "Shepard has fever. Needs supervision. Your shift in 20 min." from Tali. He'd figured he can catch up on Liara's version when he gets there. 

He comes in and finds Tali dozing right in their bed. Right in there with an arm and leg slung across them. He almost leaves - if not to leave this blissful scene undisturbed than to have his laugh at a safe distance - when Shepard stirs.

The scene is no less incredible up close. Tali is thoroughly out. Shepard points to her and says something. He leans in. They say it again, though his translator struggles with it. It routes the word to his omnitool, which brings up a short description and image. Starfish.

She must have an ear for his muted cackling, because Tali stirs and, realizing her unique position, jerks away with enough force to flip herself off the bed.

"Please," he says. "One piece of blackmail at a time."

"Since when are you so quiet? Can't be that long since I could tell where you've been by the scratches on the walls."

"Age brings grace, Tali. To, well, some of us."

She dusts herself off with a scoff and turns to leave. "Beauty, too. To some of us," she says with a flick at a scarred mandible. "When you're done taking stealth tips from Thane, maybe make sure the commander survives your shift."

He's midway through workshopping a devastating own when he realizes Tali is leaving him with Shepard without so much as a backwards glance.

"Um.. anything I should know about-"

"What, the mysterious, probably fatal, fever you'll be keeping track of? Not really," she says before leaving.

"It is not fatal," EDI says. "In fact, the commander has shown great improvement in the past few hours."

His mandibles chatter. "Thanks."

Shepard is out again. He grabs a chair and figures he's put off Liara's essays for long enough. He's a few minutes in when EDI interrupts.

"Biotic pressure rising."

"This is...bad, I take it."

"Not optimal. It has been steadily dropping until now."

"Perfect." 

He replaces the cool cloth on their forehead, wakes them to drink, adjusts the thermostat, and parts them from all but one old, flat pillow, an old tip from a human medic that supposedly opens the airway.

"Verdict?"

"Still rising."

He hisses under his breath and pretends not to hear the pounding in his chest.

"Doctor T'Soni and the admiral spoke often to Shepard."

"Well, they always were chatterboxers," he says. "Did I get that one right, Shepard? Chatterboxer?"

Shepard is still out. Garrus hums. "Wouldn't want to be in your feet, Shepard, forced to listen to some turian bastard butcher one treasured human idiom after another. Entirely by accident."

He paces some, rattles off mundane news like the soup of the day or recent Battlespace ratings. He's run dry in under five minutes. 

"I'm beat, Shepard. Turian of action here. I charge extra for words."

He tries to sit on their bed, sure to take up as little space as he can. Even that unsettles him, that bit of familiarity. He grits his teeth at how stereotypically turian it is and compromises by perching on the floor beside the bed. Wouldn't hurt the Hierarchy to take some pointers from quarians. Ready to curl up on the spot, friend or foe.

He rests one arm on the bed. "If you don't wake up soon, I'm resorting to elcor nursery rhymes." 

He doesn't remember dozing off. It was so easy to lean back, to cradle his head between his arm and the soft sheets for just a moment.

He does remember what wakes him. A light, sweeping touch at his brow.

He hums and opens one eye. "I knew it. This fever thing was a ruse to get my measurements for one of those stuffy Cipritine headwraps. You know they'd only cover, like, a quarter of the scars?"

Shepard's eyes are barely open, but they are clear. They smile.

"Now why..." they start with labored breaths, "would I wanna...hide this...." Their hand sinks and taps at a knotted scar along his mandible. "Missile-face."

"Glass huts, Shepard," he says, triumphant at their rolling eyes. He gestures to their own impressive collection of scars streaking and winding from the crown of their head and disappearing into their shirt. "I'd say you're catching up."

"I'll share my....award with the...brutes."

"I said nothing about winning."

"You're free to...run into another missile...after the war."

"I'll hold you to it."

He replaces the cloth on their forehead and checks the thermostat again.

"Did you...actually take...stealth tips?"

He groans and returns to them, pointedly ignoring their smug grin. No secrets on this ship. "When he's that good, it'd be criminal not to. Even Kasumi needed a cloak."

They make the kind of face they never would have made had they the energy to hide it. Haunted. Pained. They don't say anything for a time.

"Shepard."

"You can use the past tense."

Garrus considers them for a moment. He sits on the bed. "I'm sure Alliance makes trainees read up on turians at least as much as we're made to know yours after our species' first memorable...interaction. Our economy, culture. Spirituality."

"Sure."

"You know the gist of it, then, but maybe not the weirder details. Sometimes, it takes two generations before past tense kicks in. It's not denial. Acknowledging their influence, I guess. Or just one of those stubborn tics we pass on."

"But Victus...his son..."

"A turian Primarch on an Alliance ship deal-making with two former enemies. Not the place to tempt translators to glitch and make your would-be partners think you're losing it. I did catch him slip up here and there, maybe on my account. When you feel you're around people you can trust, family, the only other turian for light years, whatever, sometimes you can't help it."

"So just now, you..."

Garrus grunts. "I...slipped up."

Shepard is thinking. They've always been a loud thinker. Eyes and brows and mouth shifting here and there like they're having a conversation with themself. Their eyes lock on a piece of his armor, distant. "Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"C'mon. You don't have anything to..." His mandibles flare. He hasn't been a very good friend. He had checked in with them after the coup and gotten a curt brush off, but by then, so much hurtled by so quickly that there wasn't time to call them on their shit. They were everywhere at once. Burying themself in everyone else's problems and counted on their own simply fading away.

But now that they have a chance to breathe, to talk, it could be too late. Counterproductive, to rip open a wound bound only by the breakneck rush of reaper-chasing and deal-striking.

They’re the first to clam up at the mention of Alenko, the Akuze crew, of even their early, whirlwind years on earth. They all grieve in their own way. Shepard - ryncol guzzling, effortlessly charming, loudmouth champion charger - mourns alone. 

"I looked at these dates Liara passed on," he says instead. "You had this thing before."

Shepard shakes their head. "Never like this."

"It started winding down around the time we left...." He gives them a look. "Illium."

"I knew it. EDI, prepare an order of Minagen X-"

"That was a joke," Garrus snaps.

"I suspected," EDI says. "Cancelling request."

He pinches their arm to try to get rid of that grin.

"This is serious, Shepard. Whatever you did then, we need to do now. I- we need you-"

"Fighting ready. I know."

Something about that claws at him. Like all they are is a machine they're all trying to rev back up.

"Garrus?"

It would be disingenuous to pretend they don't need them as the commander, as the Spectre, as the tip of the galactic spear. But this workhorse shit is what landed them here in the first place. 

There is a hand on his. "Hey."

"Yeah," he says, drawing away. "Fighting ready."

He suggests they remember their past fevers, but it's a hard ask. They barely understood them to be fevers, then. Assumed it was part of a medley of side effects from having just been reanimated. Turns out there were more than a few. Sores that came and went. Spontaneous dislocations. GI woes. Muscle spasms. A buffet of aches and pains. Trouble breathing. He can't believe what he's hearing. They had mentioned none of it before, shown none of it. Not a cough. 

"I had no idea," he says.

"You weren't supposed to," they say. He grits his teeth.

"Those other pains," Garrus says. "Any of 'em still hanging around?"

"No."

Garrus waits.

"They're not."

He taps idly on the bed.

"I mean it."

"EDI, how would you rate this answer on a scale of very unlikely to impossible?"

"Exceptionally unlikely."

He gets a dirty look. "Not sure I'm into insubordination."

"Not sure I'm into my friend bullshitting me."

He catches it, sometimes, the moment they break between the two halves: commander, and friend. This one must have been the fastest he's ever seen it happen. It's also the fastest he's seen them this pissed.

"Shepard, if you don't-"

"Fine," they snap. "Back? Fucked. Hands? Double fucked. Haven't been regular in months. Hair's falling out. Right knee locks every morning." 

"Biotic pressure is rising," EDI warns.

They rise to their elbows. "We should've been ready months ago. Years. Why couldn't we have found other beacons? Kidnapped the fucking Council and forced them to see what I saw? Earth, Palaven, we could have stopped it. Cerberus-"

They begin to rise to a seat. Garrus pulls them back down. 

"I could have killed him. That gunship would've smeared me. But I would've killed him. You could have had the Catalyst. If I hadn’t- If Liara hadn't-"

They rise. He pulls them down and holds a hand to their chest before they can try again. They're lethal even in this state, so he has to shift his weight and work for it. 

"How's the view?" they sneer. They are enveloped in biotics again, black flaring in stinging, caustic bursts. They seize his wrist and try to budge it, and it hurts. "This enough for you, or do you want it all? Every pointless complaint, every stupid, ugly thought I ever had?" 

"All of it," he says, straining at their renewed strength. "Everything."

They struggle a moment longer before their biotics flicker out. The hand at his wrist slackens.

"Why?"

"Because I'd follow you anywhere, but it'd be neat if you weren't hurting along the way."

They have one of those inscrutable expressions again. Their eyes shine. "How. After this, how?"

"Usual way. One foot, then the other."

He moves his hand off their chest, but not far. They've got a tight hold of it again, but not a mean one. They catch their breath for a few moments with heartrending difficulty. This time, he suspects it's not the fever.

"He- he showed me," they eventually say, low and hoarse. "How to use biotics to...take the edge off. How to read my own body. If it was too much or if nothing worked, he'd show me how to escape it. Hang around in a nice memory until it passes."

Finally. 

"You stopped doing it."

"Didn't think I needed it."

"You're lying."

The hand in his tightens. "I had it under control."

"Clearly not."

"I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"I didn't- I-"

Their eyes meet again.

"I could have,” they say, and all the tension in them bleeds out.

They don't need to finish the thought. He had the unfortunate privilege of catching their face when that blade hit home. It’s the one he’s seeing now. Deadened. Slack with shock. He shakes his head.

"You were there," they say.

"Exactly. You couldn't have." 

Leng had been an unknown. They had to move the salarian councilor to safety. Thane would have been caught in crossfire. Maneuvering between a close quarters encounter or shouting commands could have distracted him long enough to foul up all their good intentions. They knew all this, had said so themself in the mission debrief. Their report to Hackett had listed these and half a dozen more.

So he suspects they don't want to hear them again.

"You believed in him."

"Where did that get us?"

"Only a third of galactic government."

"And a dead man."

"Did he regret it?"

Shepard says nothing. He knows they understand, knows they've run through this line of thought and every version of its counter a hundred times over. Sometimes, it helps to hear it out loud. Helps to hear someone else say it.

Garrus pats their shoulder with his other hand. "Spirits forbid anyone has a messiah complex like yours."

"Fuck off," they say without bite. They aren't flushed anymore. The hand in his slackens entirely. At some point in all that mess, the fever had abated, and they sink into a deep, untroubled sleep.

**

After their recovery and subsequent hit on Sanctuary, Doctor Chakwas made galactic history by confining Shepard to quarters for medically mandated rest. A preventative measure arrived at amicably while they hunt for more information on that fever, though no less amusing to anyone on the ship whose imagination struggles to reconcile the words _Shepard_ and _confinement_. James takes the opportunity to remind everyone just how much contraband Shepard had smuggled past Alliance guard.

Garrus descends into the cabin and falls into a chair as Shepard stretches near the couch in workout gear, undoubtedly ready to argue that this qualifies as rest. 

"Imprisoned yet again," he laments.

"No justice."

"You did spike a few times down there."

They transition seamlessly into a split. He looks away. 

"Was that before or after the fifth banshee?"

"Not sure," he says. "Say, what might it be around the fifth reaper? The fifteenth?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine."

"Might as well get back on that biotic phys-therapy meditation thing. If you heat up again and fry the main core, Tali's gonna make a mean ghost."

Shepard eases out of the split. "Doesn't work anymore." 

"Why not?"

They bristle and stretch the other leg.

"Running low on inner peace lately."

"Can't focus?"

"Everything...rushes back in." They rise to a crouch. "Reapers. Cerberus. Leng. All those dying, eviscerated-"

He jostles their shoulder and, thankfully, their mind, out of that line of thought. They let themself lose their balance and sit back down.

"I'll figure it out," they say.

"You don't sound convinced."

"I said-"

"Just saying. If there's anything your favorite turian can do to help, I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

They stand and jostle him in return as they pass. They sink into the bed, typical sleeveless shirt riding up over hard muscle as they prop one arm under their head. 

"What does my favorite turian recommend?"

"Oh, the usual. Spar til you drop and forget your own name, that sort of thing. Worked with Jack, Grunt. Maybe you should be on the receiving end for once. If it even worked for Wrex...” 

"I wouldn't call him mellow."

"You didn't have the pleasure of working with him in the hold on the SR1. By the time we hit Ilos, he was almost a gentleman. I think I caught him say _please_."

Their brows shoot up. "No."

"Just once. Possibly by accident."

He sits on the bed at their insistence. “Or, maybe that thing Liara does-"

"Good for fast relief, but doesn't last. Thessia's on her mind, I can't distract her with this."

"Tali has this whole suite of nerve stimulators-"

"Thrilling. Doesn't last either."

He hums idly. "I don't know how it is on other human ships-"

"Say we're a turian ship."

Garrus laughs at the thought. "If we were turians..." He doesn't finish, but it's too late.

"If we were turians...?"

"Belay that thought."

"EDI, lock the door."

"Locked."

Garrus groans. "Fine, but only because I've seen you make eyes at almost every kind of sentient being in the galaxy, so I assume you won't be scandalized."

"I appreciate high art."

"Oh, sure. Anyway, we're a lot less puritanical than you humans. Tiebreakers in quarters, you'll recall."

"Don't yours have a hard-on for maintaining rank?"

He huffs. "I like to think adviser to the Primarch is at least on par with commander," he says without thinking.

Shepard blinks. "I thought you meant the crew..." They sit up on their elbows with a lethal grin. "You villain. Holding out on me all these years."

Garrus laughs nervously, mandibles clicking and hoping desperately that if he can talk himself into this, he can talk right out of it. "A hero, actually, for sparing your delicate human sensibilities."

“Keep talking and I'll have to prove you wrong.”

“Your favorite sport."

"Reigning champion," they say.

"I wouldn't go that far."

"I would."

"Would you do anything?” he says, mouth racing ahead of his mind again.

A surge of biotics pulls him forward. He throws his arms out to break his fall. They land on either side of their head. 

“Would you?” they ask in return.

He strains to flatten his mandibles against his face to still their nervous chatter. This can't be real. He opens and closes his mouth several times before Shepard lets him go with a laugh and a hard push.

"Hey, don't get so serious. I know you like them sharp."

"That's not-" Fuck. That would've been a solid alibi. Even now, he hears the gears in Shepard's head grind to a full stop.

"Oh? Hanar-soft?"

They're still ribbing, still giving him one out after another, but for some reason, he can't reach up and take one. The Crucible is complete. Sooner than they know, they will either be victorious, or dead. This isn't Saren, Sovereign, the Collector base. Things won't just go back to normal. There hasn't been a normal since Saren. Since Shepard. 

They rise to a seat and knock his shoulders with theirs. "Hey, lighten up. C'mon. It's not like you're..."

He doesn't say anything. He should've made some dumb joke, deflected. Holding up the mask is just tiring enough that it stays down. He expects more of that bravado, some cheesy line or three, and then a swift end to this. He doesn't expect a face like that. Not a frighteningly sober:

"How long?"

He thinks fleetingly of denying it, even now. They would let him. He doesn’t. He doesn’t think he can.

"Well. There was always a little hero worship. After Saren...maybe it turned into something else, maybe not. I don't really know what to call it."

Shepard looks away.

He frowns. "What?"

"I'd've thought...I don't know. A few weeks, or..." They card through their hair, a rare tic outside of the field. "All this time?"

Something is off about how they ask it. Now they're too serious. 

"There I go inflating your head," he says. "I haven’t been pining after you," he lies, a little. "Not everyone in the known universe needs to yearn for those bright eyes and massive guns."

"Which guns are we talking?"

"Precisely the ones you think," he says, glad for the renewed sunlight in their face. "Anyway, it- it’s not a problem. Never been, never will be. You know me." 

"Yeah. Sorry for being an ass, I'll lay off." 

"We're good, Shepard. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be inundated with turian bachelors and bachelorettes when this is over." 

He doesn't expect their face to turn to stone.

"Shepard?"

He watches the effort it takes to swallow whatever it is that eats them. They shake their head at his question, and he really, truly, should have stopped there. 

"EDI," he says, "lock the door."

There's a twitch at their mouth, but only just. Their jaw sets. They look at him, straight at him, when, after a few silent, broiling moments, he remains beside them.

"Do you know what I do," they say, "when you're not on the field with me?"

"What?"

"I take cover."

"No." Garrus laughs. "You...no.”

“Check op footage. I feel like I'm missing a limb. Deaf, blind-"

"The others-"

They rise to walk off the sudden surge of energy in them. "I can't feel it when someone else covers me. I'm slow, I get nicked, I take fewer chances. I'm not good enough. I'm not me." Their step falters. "You know how I move. No one knows like you do. You pick off a merc's armor when I'm mid-charge, bagged a hundred heads that would've taken mine." They approach him. "Do you know how often I plot charges after your shots? Follow _your_ lead?"

A few of these, he knew himself - maybe most of it - but he's never thought of it all in concert before. It would have thoroughly fried his already fraying nerves anytime he is left behind. He rises and starts to speak when they beat him to it.

"You know what I thought when you joined me again, _Archangel_?"

His scars begin to itch.

"Finally," they recall with feeling. "Now, this is real."

He can't think, can't move, with their eyes on him like that. Boiling him alive.

"So this idea that you're interchangeable with any turian? That you're, what, convenient? Fuck off." They size him up and say, as an aside, "I should kick your ass."

He laughs with nearly hysterical relief. "Fight me for my own honor?"

"That's right," they say, lightening up a little. They check his shoulder as they pass and fall back on the bed. 

He gathers himself and sits by them. "I didn't mean anything by it, I'm just a little..."

"How could you think that?"

"I had no idea you..."

"You know me."

"Not like he did."

Shepard's eyes are distant for a moment. "I used to feel like that, too," they say. "About someone else. Someone who gave him more of herself than I ever could." 

He expected everything from fury to joke to brush off. Anything to maintain that luxuriously cultivated mystery, that hard-won privacy. He gets this, instead. Something messy and sincere. Something real. 

"How did you...stop feeling that?"

They disappear again, for a moment, into what must be a pleasant memory. "I never did. But he never made me feel second best. I hope I-"

"You don't. Just my own...you know." 

Shepard mercifully lets him slot his thoughts back into some kind of order for a few moments, but they don't wait long. They prod him with one foot, then the other, until he catches one and grouses disingenuously about them dirtying his good jacket.

"Funny how you think that gun-oil soaked jacket isn't mucking up my feet."

He traces a talon lightly against the caught sole, earns himself a sharp gasp and a kick, and moves to pin both lethal weapons before resuming the torture. Shepard must be as recovered as they insist, because he couldn’t remember how they managed to slip out, throw all seven feet him over their shoulder and face first into the bed, and pull his arms up behind him.

"You might be a better shot-"

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Garrus says. "Could you repeat that? Into a mic?"

They tighten their hold, but not to discomfort. "-but this close, I don't have to be."

He swings his head and frees himself when they dodge his fringe, makes a blind, preemptive lunge, and suddenly finds himself hovering over them again as they simply watch, unbothered. 

"I..."

"Hey." 

Shepard pushes him off and haphazardly throws their legs over his. It's rough and casual and should be in no way alluring, so his brain must be thoroughly cooked to thrill in it anyway.

"Calm the clackers," they say.

He curses his traitorous mandibles and rises on his elbows. "Oh? Intimidated by my effortless charm already?"

"Turn it on and maybe I'll notice it."

"So worldly, are you?"

"Maybe."

"Shepard." 

"Mm?"

"Have you ever...with a hanar."

"Haven't had the pleasure."

“Salarian.”

“Almost.”

"Oh? Krogan."

Shepard is slow to respond.

His breath freezes in his lungs. "Spirits..."

"What!"

"Wow." He feels faint. "I don't even...wow. Did...did it hurt?"

"She seemed fine."

His head sinks into the bed under the gravitational well of their grin. He lingers for a moment and rests his eyes before his aching limbs and various field wounds revolt and decide to become one with the duvet. 

He steels himself for this one. Maybe he's projecting, but they look like they've been waiting for it, too.

"Time is funny around you, Shepard. Days feel like weeks. Weeks, like years. Still." His voice lowers. "Is it too soon?"

They don't look surprised by the question, but they aren't quick to answer. 

He watches the steady rise and fall of their chest with every breath they take. On the SR1, a rejected Alenko was the latest to be reminded that the commander does not fraternize, Alliance regs or not. No civilian partner waited for them either. Garrus couldn't squeeze much out of them over drinks, back then, but for some vague words on the pointlessness of it, given their profession. 

He swallows. "Sorry. You don't have to-" 

Even with Thane, when he figured the two out - with only a little help from Tali and Kasumi - it was hidden in plain sight. No public displays. No long gazes. Not a whiff of favoritism. Whenever they wanted a moment alone, on the ship or elsewhere, they simply disappeared. Shepard gives so much of themself - to their crew, to Alliance, the Council - that what little remains, they guard jealously. 

"I don't know what _soon_ means anymore," Shepard says. Their eyes linger on his scars. "But I know _too late_."

He has no answer to his own question. He knows, has known for too long, that he will take anything they are willing to give. When he comes back to himself, he sees that they took advantage of his fumbling thoughts by balling up the duvet and shoving him and all his sharp, unsupported points into the mercifully soft makeshift cushion. 

Faintly, he recalls that he might have confessed something or other a bit earlier. He isn't sure anymore. Surely, it shouldn't be this carefree, then, this easy. A hand plays with his uninjured mandible, moves it here or there, waggles it up and down as if a handshake in miniature. It's funny and stupid and perfect.

Their hand dips into the soft, narrow space at the join of his mandible and his cheek. The touch softens as he hums and moves to give them more room, more of himself. Their hair sticks up in a familiar arc. He’s reminded of something, and it must show on his face. They frown questioningly. 

He hums as their hand sinks to follow his jaw, his throat. "Apparently, there was this photo of you flying around the turian extranet a few years ago. Came up sometime after Sovereign."

"Yeah?"

"Wind did this thing to your hair that made it look like a fringe. Knowing your disdain for societal...expectations, Turian men born without, women born with, and everyone in between all went wild. More than usual. The Hierarchy isn't very accommodating to anyone it can't easily rank and file. Then in comes the talk-of-the-galaxy Council-saving reaper-killer who rejects every fool attempt to fit them in this or that box. Someone who's a little bit like them."

Their smile is slow to spread, but he's never seen one more genuine, more effortlessly happy. Their ears redden. "Shit.”

"Oh, it gets better. They dug it back up since you brokered their talks and now our top generals are filling the pissing match vacuum by waving this thing around and claiming you as an honorary turian. Wrex has gotta be mounting a counter-campaign as we speak-"

Shepard's lips are on his brow. It's complemented with a soft - for them - headbutt. They remain beside him, their forehead against his.

“Even before Saren," he whispers against them, "hearing that some earth-rat-turned-Spectre candidate was forcing Hierarchy diplomats to dust off their neuter conjugations? That might have been the moment, Shepard.”

“What? Not my guns?”

Garrus glanced at their arms with a quip on his tongue that lay forgotten as his eyes lingered.

“I meant. You know. Mantis, Wraith-”

“You know you didn't.”

They’re close now, but it’s still good, still easy. Their legs are still thrown over his. Their nose or cheek brushes just so against his brow. He's never seen them so comfortably still. 

"We'd huddle like this in abandoned storefronts at night," Shepard suddenly says. "Like a pack of dogs. Something was wrong if someone's foot wasn't in your face. Elbows in your gut." 

They never talk about Earth. Not like this. Their hair falls into another perfect mess as they inch closer. Crimson strands catch the dim, flickering lights as the ship suffers a stream of turbulence.

"Thought Alliance hardasses rubbed it out of me, but when Cerberus screwed my head back on..."

He cards through their hair and watches their eyes drift instantly shut, feels them lean into his hand.

"Some memories," they say, "came back louder than others."

He remembers how many questions they asked. How they insisted he tell them not just everything they missed, but every last moment he remembered on the SR1. How mortified they pretended not to be when they couldn't remember something, large or small. A birthday. An inside joke. Their mother's name. Eventually, they stopped asking. Garrus stopped retelling. They were ashamed. He hadn't known what to do with that. He had plenty of his own.

"You understand that Tali would be first in line for the pile if she knew," he says.

"I think she suspects. Likes getting me drunk a little too much."

Maybe it took someone like Krios to show them how to find those pieces, how to slot them into place. A perfect stranger. Free of judgement, real or imagined. 

"Shepard."

"Yeah?"

Despite the chest-thumping pomp, they suffer shame more deeply, and more quietly, than anyone he's ever known. They never talk about Earth, about Akuze. They pried half the crew from those Collector pods themself. Personally hunted down the gnarled dog tags of the fallen SR1 crew. Disappear at the mention of Alenko, as if them simply hearing that name was an insult to his memory. 

"Try it again," he says. "That meditation."

"It won't work."

"Here. Like this."

They cock their head at him. "It's unorthodox."

"We could invite Tali and _really_ break some rules."

They snort and settle at the hollow of his throat. Their hair threads through his mandibles, tickles his chin. Their legs shift beneath his. The gist of their movements encourages him to slip an arm around them and shift his weight. As soon as he does, they embrace him and pull him closer until he'd have worried about crushing them, were he not regular witness to them throwing krogan mercs over their head. They tell him what to expect. He assures them that he's not running for the airlock.

After a few still, silent moments, a soft biotic glow envelops Shepard. It crests over him like a shallow wave and ripples like a live thing. He holds them close despite the rising, stinging heat. They are in turns cold and hot, stiff and restless. A silent, invisible force he can feel nowhere but in his own head forms at Shepard's crown and radiates outward like a stiff gale. It moves into their eyes, and then the hollow of their throat. Their chest and arms. Gut. Pelvis. Legs. They are pressed so close that he feels it all. Feels it gently wash away.

Shepard opens their eyes. 

Garrus strokes their back. “Verdict?”

They answer by opening their hand between them and summoning a dense, crackling, obsidian mass.

**

"Absolutely not," Liara says.

Javik paces her office. "When a gift is prostrate before you, asari, use it."

"I don't know if I believe you, but even if I did, I wouldn't tell them. Just knowing they could do that-"

"They deserve to know. Assuming they have not figured it out already."

Liara breathes hard. 

"Fine. After we find Cerberus."

**

EDI turns from one of the Illusive Man's consoles at the sound of a shattered blade. Biotic pressure spikes with such force that Garrus sinks to one knee. The belligerent Cerberus agent that attempted to take Shepard by surprise sinks farther, as if physically crushed. Her own circuits strain. 

In moments, the pressure lifts, and Kai Leng is dead. 

**

Liara visits Shepard on the observation deck.

"How do you feel?"

They look up from their seat.

"Like ass. Great, otherwise."

"How did you know?"

"Hm?"

"That pulse. EDI described it. You figured out how to control the fever."

"Here I thought I could hate someone to death."

"More or less," Liara says. She relays Javik's eleventh hour admission and EDI's own findings. The fever, likely born of eezo overexposure during Lazarus and catalyzed by extraordinary stress, will remain with Shepard for the rest of their life. Each remission will be worse than the last. Every drop of black has been them unwittingly fueling their biotics by carving fissures into their own body. 

"So it's terminal," Shepard says.

"In the way that old age is terminal. You could have a perfectly long and healthy life-"

"Unless I use it."

Liara crosses her arms and says nothing lest her shining eyes brim over. There is nothing to say. To imagine that Shepard would not take advantage of this at the cost of their own life is to not know Shepard. She has no delusions about their chances, but for the first time, she understands that she will not be seeing these kind, stubborn eyes for much longer.

Shepard gestures to the seat next to them, and once she gathers herself, Liara joins them. Their arm is around her, and her head falls to their shoulder. Shepard also says nothing. 

Liara blinks.

"You're looking at the stars," she realizes.

They could barely budge their eyes from any window they passed on the SR1. Years since they first enlisted and left Earth, they could be mistaken for a stellar tourist for all their wonder. But since their death, they all but made a sport of avoiding them. As they suffocated to their first death, they were the last thing they saw.

"Yeah," they say distantly. "We're catching up."

**

Less than a day before they are due to join the forces on Earth, Garrus enters the cargo bay in time to see Vega hit the floor and Shepard in dire need of a new sparring partner. He taps in, and they spar. He blindfolds them, and they spar. He ties one arm behind their back, and they spar.

He lets himself pant freely when they tap out and leave to wash up. He makes an executive decision not to check the time and find out that one of the most demanding sessions in his life might have lasted the length of a coffee break. 

They've done everything they can. Signed every emergency unification treaty. Polished every last cannon. Confirmed that every person on every ship closing on their planet has been briefed, trained, and armed. All that is left is getting there. Waiting.

He visits them during their sleep cycle on a hunch and finds them pacing their cabin like a caged thing. They light up at the sight of him and propose round two. 

"Much as I enjoy being drop-kicked across the bay in front of the cargo crew, a little voice in my head suggests we save our strength."

They nod, though the light in their eyes dims. "Right," they say, resume pacing, and cannot make it more apparent that they are done with him.

"Can't help but notice you stomping around like a trapped varren."

"Oh yeah?"

"And looking much too ready to arm wrestle a brute to possibly get any - necessary - sleep."

"Uh-huh."

He catches them by their shoulders.

"You need to-"

"I know," they grit through their teeth.

"We could do that thing again. You know."

"Appreciate it. But it's not that."

"Then...?"

They pull away and size him up, but not in a way he's used to, from them. Defensively. 

"Would you believe I'm nervous?"

"I'd be more worried if you weren't."

"It's another thing, to hear it from the bastard about to throw you into hell."

"Way past time to worry about whether I'd bail at the smallest thing, Shepard."

"Confidence in your commanding officer is no small thing."

"Don't go giving me a Hierarchy line." 

They grin briefly. "Just checking if you're still allergic to them. Can't have you leaving us for Victus."

"Can't say the dextro rations tempt me to stay."

"Not too late to fill the transfer order."

"Come on, Shepard. Not after...you know. Everything."

He watches their ears redden and struggles to reign in his triumph. That color usually shows up after ten shots, and not one sooner. 

They watch him watching them. "You look like you want to do something," they say.

He's still not sure where they are, the two of them. There's no name to it. Nothing to compare it to, if anything could possibly compare. 

He strides toward them. "I'm afraid it's something distinctly and catastrophically unprofessional."

But his nerves have long since jumped several thousand light years ahead to the Normandy's destination, leaving him to be unafraid of this, of the two of them, for the first and possibly last time.

"The best kind," they say.

He closes the distance between them. 

"You imagine a life after this?" they ask suddenly. 

"Sometimes. Vaguely," he says. "You?"

They give him a long look. 

"No."

It's a hard, deliberate sound. Their eyes, guarded and searching, supply the rest. 

He lied, before. To Shepard, he, like the sacrificed Alliance fleet at the battle of the Citadel, like the batarian colony wiped by the obliterated Alpha Relay, and like anyone else, will always come second. Though if it's second to saving and avenging several trillion lives, he thinks he can take the hit. They wouldn't be Shepard, otherwise. He wouldn't be himself. 

Never is he more frustrated with this lifeless, utilitarian universal translator than he is now. So he says nothing. He meets their forehead with his own, meets their eyes, and nods. He understands. Always had. They cannot, will not, imagine another life before they have liberated this one. They cannot let the heady promise of a better life distract from the labor, blood, and pain needed to bring it into being.

They step back and pull him along by the sweep of his waist until their back meets the wall, until they can lean back and open their throat. Until there’s nowhere left to go for them but through him. 

“Good,” they sigh.

It inflames him, how they know to do this. Not for the first time, he wonders at their instincts. They know just which expressions convince a salarian, which stance would swindle a volus, and no krogan alive doesn’t think of them as one of their own. They'll charm the suit off a quarian and the blue off asari. Even other turians, never eager to trust a human, warm to them with supreme reluctance. 

He attempts to calm himself with steady breaths, only for their hands to wander over every sensitive stretch of his waist and hips, listen for every sound he makes, every twitch, and dig in until he's wound even tighter. 

Not just any human. An Earthling who'd never so much as left the atmosphere before they came of age.

He gives in and runs his mouth over their ear, feels its warmth through his plates. It was a whim, a hazy analogue to what he might have done had they had mandibles. He must not be so far off, because Shepard hums and leans back to give him more room. Their hands tighten on his waist at the lick he dares at its shell.

They do something with their hands, something he won't even remember after the whiteout of pleasure that rips through him. He doesn't remember when he had taken them entirely in his arms. Powerful thighs grip his waist. Arms like corded steel loop around his neck. Hands sweep over his fringe. A hot mouth at his throat.

They are on the desk. The couch. The bed. He doesn't have the mind to tease them for their indecision before he is pushed into the armchair. He isn't left alone for long.

"Too soft?" he drawls with a nod toward the bed as Shepard sinks into his lap.

"Not designed for these," they say with a harsh grip on his fringe that shoots to his hips. They ride it out with a too-amused grin, shift their hold, and somehow pull another, stronger reaction from him. They brace against the back of the seat and buck into him to force him back down.

"Learning things about yourself?" they tease.

He can barely hear them over the rush of blood in his ears. He closes his teeth over the join of their shoulder and neck and pulls their hips flush with his own. He groans as their hand slips between them and strokes him through cloth until he nearly pants.

Shepard follows the line of his jaw with their mouth as he loses himself in the feeling of them on his hips, in his arms, at his throat. They come to his mouth and drag their teeth along the sharp edge of his plates until he grows impatient, tilts his head, and licks into their mouth. 

They moan into his. Their hand slips behind his buckle and strokes him properly as they close their mouth on his retreating tongue. 

"Stop," he breathes. "I'm..." 

They laugh breathlessly as they rest their head on his shoulder and run their hands over his arms, his bared chest. He cards through their hair as he comes down. In no universe will he last much longer, so he takes advantage of the reprieve to slip one hand between them.

They shudder against his collar at the barest touch of his blunted talon over fabric. He has to bite his tongue to avoid comment. He stops their hand from returning the favor while his own goes on teasing. When they answer his questioning touch with a nod and hard bite at his collar, he slips past the band and brings them so close to the edge that a surge of biotics forces his hand away.

In a logistical feat, Shepard strips without leaving his lap for more than a moment, settles back down, and snaps at his own band with palpable impatience. The rest passes in a renewed rush of hands, tongues, and biotics. They bite his tongue when they finish, taking him with them.

**

They're reinforcing their firearms and armor in the main battery when Shepard starts to talk.

There were a few krogan in their crew, on earth. Volus, batarians. Even a turian boy, once. It was hardest for him to play human when the fringe grew in. Snatched one day and deported right off the street. All kids. Stowaways and runaways. 

They ran in one of the megacities with an active interstellar port, but don't say which. Didn't make much difference to a street rat beyond which language they use to beg. Shepard didn't beg for long. Not when they learned that fists can talk. They learned enough basic terms from everyone's common tongue to head off miscommunication and play the part of the street diplomat. Anyone caught disturbing the peace received an invitation from said fists. 

They used many names, most taken or given in jest. Names of old gods, thinkers, pioneers. Eventually, when they turned their eyes to the stars, one of them stuck.

A few years before they came of age, a pair of thugs from a human supremacist chapter decide to have fun with their batarian friend. He loses an eye and nurses too many broken bones and sharp pains to be optimistic about seeing the new year. Shepard hunted them down, and killed them.

They were caught and arrested before the sun came down. A merciful judge ordered them impressed into the Alliance military. They never saw their friend again.

Garrus' rifle rests in his hands, forgotten.

"Afraid I'm nothing like the vids," Shepard says, adjusting a barrel mod for the third time.

Garrus traces an old, faded scar on their jaw. One older, far older, than Lazarus. 

"Not even close.”

**

He comes back to himself as Shepard hands him off to Tali. Blue blood smears the shuttle entrance. Reaper howls rattle through his ribcage. The Citadel beam spirals behind them. Shepard embraces Tali, whispers something to her, and rounds on him, forehead briefly meeting his own. A torrent of billowing, crackling black follows in the wake of their final charge.

The Citadel's arms unfold. The Normandy tears through the Sol relay to outrun a vindictive destroyer. A blinding light sweeps through the ship, along with the familiar sensation of a wave cresting over him.

The reaper follows them through, prepares to fire, and never does.


End file.
